A fund-raiser for Karen DeLabar

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You’ve reached the half-way point of wrangling 50,000 words together this month (where in the heck has this month gone, by the way?). Congratulations!! Are your fingers furiously typing trying to feverishly keep up with the amazing ideas in your brain? Or are you kind of stuck, banging your head against your desk, hoping that words struggling to get past all the self-doubt and self-criticism will somehow tumble out onto paper?
What do you do when you’ve hit the dreaded “Writer’s Block?” Tweet about it? Randomly poke some friends on Facebook? Text a whole bunch of people hoping they respond right away? Scrub the kitchen floors?

What do you do when all of those things don’t work?
You could check out the Submission Guidelines of our Orange Karen Anthology. There’s nothing like a bit of productive procrastination to bust through the brick wall of Writer’s Block. Sometimes changing your focus can loosen up those creative joints. The orange Karen anthology project is an excellent opportunity to recharge your inspiration and do something awesome to help an awesome chick, all at the same time.
Speaking of inspiration, let me tell you a little about our dear friend, Karen. She’s a loving mother and wife and a fantastic friend, but Karen is also a writer. And she’s participating in NaNoWriMo this year. And she is kicking its ass. There are many roadblocks in Karen’s path to success with NaNoWriMo. First of all, due to nerve damage caused by the disease that nearly killed her last summer, she can’t type very fast or for very long. So she was able to get Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech to text software, to help her rack up the word count on the page. Karen also still experiences a lot of pain still, so she has to pace herself. Tack that onto being a busy mom of two sweet little girls and you’ve got the profile of a warrior. Nothing holds her back. Nothing. She almost lost her life, but she came back fighting – literally. Just ask Karen’s nurses. She is our Orange Warrior. If there is a will, there is a way. It may not be easy, but it sure as hell will be worth it.

You want proof that Karen is truly an Orange Warrior? She posted this on her Facebook wall recently:

“Ok, wrote almost 4500 yesterday. I’m going to try for 5K tomorrow then I’ll only be 2 days behind. DeLabar’s big come from behind victory is in the works. I already ran one pen dry, working on the second! Watch out, people!!”
So writers, what’ll it be? A flourish to finish NaNoWriMo? A submission to the Orange Karen Anthology? Or are you going to go for the gusto and do both? If you are not a multi-tasker, the submission deadline is December 15, 2012 so you can still craft up a short story after you cross the NaNoWriMo finish line!
Whatever it is, we’re behind you. We’re the ones whispering “You can do it” in your ear and cheering when you hit a milestone in your plot development, or in word count.
Go forth, you wizards of words, you crafters of climaxes.
Go forth and do what you do, and when an obstacle rises in your path, think of Karen as you ninja-kick that obstacle’s ass.